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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which thick coatings of ice appear as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural life force in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Family Conflicts

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

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